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Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

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Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#41

Post by digikata »

smm2000 wrote: post #27
throwaway5752 wrote: post #5

It's pathetic that a government agency is beholden to charity from billionaires instead of being fully funded from tax receipts. What a debacle. That said, hat's off to Zuckerberg. His reaction sharply contrasts with so much of the shameful, cynical fearmongering from some quarters.

Most experts think that Ebola presents low risk to US so I am not sure why CDC should spend significant resources on it. Private company is working on vaccines and at current funding CDC is perfectly capable of handling a few cases of Ebola in US. Voiding visas of everyone who was in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other affected countries together with mandatory three week quarantine for few US citizens who was there is p…

Besides humanitarian reasons?

How about this: the risk model for ebola is based on limited empirical data from past strains. The current outbreak already exceeds past outbreaks. If the virus is different than the past, or it mutates, then the model from which we assess that the risk is low could be wrong.

So helping to end the outbreak, for one, would cutoff many, many opportunities for ebola to mutate into something even worse.

Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#42

Post by smm2000 »

dreamweapon wrote: post #35
smm2000 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most experts think that Ebola presents low risk to US so I am not sure why CDC should spend significant resources on it. Private company is working on vaccines and at current funding CDC is perfectly capable of handling a few cases of Ebola in US. Voiding visas of everyone who was in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other affected countries together with mandatory three week quarantine for few US citizens who was there is p…

CDC budget for 2014 is $6.8B so 25 million is drop in a bucket anyway. And the budget for the department tasked with responding to the Ebola crisis is how much?

CDC should be able to re-allocate budget on a short notice - I am sure there are contingency plans for it. On CDC website they list priorities - Food Safety, Healthcare-associated, Infections, HIV in the U.S.,Motor Vehicle Injuries, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, Teen Pregnancy, Tobacco. I am sure they can cut 1% from these programs - none of them is any kind of emergency.

If there was a risk of Ebola reaching African proportion in US, I am sure there are emergency funds to bolster up CDC. But currently there is no such risk and realistically there is no good way to spend significant amount of money in US on Ebola.

Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#43

Post by chongli »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #5

It's pathetic that a government agency is beholden to charity from billionaires instead of being fully funded from tax receipts. What a debacle. That said, hat's off to Zuckerberg. His reaction sharply contrasts with so much of the shameful, cynical fearmongering from some quarters.

It's pathetic that a government agency is beholden to charity from billionaires instead of being fully funded from tax receipts. What a debacle.

Billionaires don't pay taxes, they lend money to the government. This is the system the billionaires created for us.

Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#44

Post by spikels »

autechr3 wrote: post #14
fdsary wrote: post #11

I know Zuckerberg is rich from creating Facebook, but where did Chan find her stash of money? Or are they donating Mark's money but using both people names? Asking out of curiosity, not trying to make some dumb point.

When you are married, all of your spouses money is your money (unless you agree it isnt).

It's not quite that simple. California, where they live, is a "community property" state[1]. This means that anything earned while married is community property - owned 50/50 by both people. On the other hand anything you had before marriage (or inherited) is "separate property" - owned 100% that person.

Due to these rules the fact they were married after - one day after! - the IPO could make a big difference if they were to ever divorce[2]. Of course, like almost every very wealthy person, they likely have a prenuptial agreement which should establish exactly who owns what.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property

[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-facebook-prenup...

Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#45

Post by deciplex »

sixdimensional wrote: post #19
sixdimensional wrote: post #2

In the US, we hear that government and process gets in the way of getting the funding needed to be prepared or respond to these types of emergencies. Somehow I feel that only 30-50 years ago, there was not so much red tape in the way (nor was there the ability for a sophisticated/organized response - so it cuts both ways). I vacillate between thinking that just giving money will not make a huge difference here, and t…

I'm confused, why is this voted down? I was genuinely hoping to see what others thought about giving money and/or other alternatives? I personally feel I am not doing enough to help and not happy seeing people suffering from this disease (and many other things) in any country. I myself want to help make a positive difference and am trying to figure out what else can be done beyond just donating to help (or whether ra…

>I'm confused, why is this voted down?

Downvotes on HN, especially for new posts, correlate basically not at all with post quality. That's what happens when a brigade of grumpy assholes make it their mission to read the first word of every sentence in a post and then vote based on whether they feel you wasted their time or not.

We're worse than Reddit in this regard so don't worry about it too much.

Re: Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

#46

Post by spikels »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #37
spikels wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me "shameful, cynical [and] fearmongering" but I don't think the ineffectiveness of the CDC on Ebola is due to lack of resources or that $25 million will make a difference. They have a $6 billion plus annual budget ($25 million is a 0.4% increase) and rarely pay for the actual treatment of patients. Instead they are primarily supposed to do research and disseminate information in advance of health threats. I thi…

I don't get it. There's 1 domestically transmitted case of Ebola. There are ~200 new cases of leprosy per year. How much more effective do you want them to be? And sticker shock aside, $6B is less that any annual super-pharma R&D budget that I was able to find in a brief search (Merck, Pfizer, GSK). And that is just R&D, not even SG&A. edit: look, they can fit all domestic rabies cases in a small table on a single pa…

Make that 2 domestically transmitted cases of Ebola.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/ebola-found-in-second-healthc...

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